After the success of last year’s debut event, this year’s Lahinch Traditional Music Festival promises to be bigger and even better.
With more than 145 musicians already confirmed for the event, the festival is quickly gaining a name for being a festival by musicians, for musicians.
As well as the music however, this year’s event includes a number of new artistic and cultural elements which aim to bring a whole new expanded feel to the event.
“Last year exceeded all expectations. We had lovely weather, massive crowds turned out and a lot of musicians turned up and played in with the core group of musicians. Some of the prominent musicians who were there said that it was a festival for musicians. The quality of the music was incredible,” said Marie O’Sullivan, granddaughter of Susan O’Sullivan and co-organiser of the festival.
“This year’s festival takes place at the start of the school holidays for children so teachers and parents are really in holiday mode. This year, as it was last year, the Cliffs of Moher Cycle Challenge is also taking place, so lots of people have booked in locally and will attend both the festival and the cycle challenge.”
According to Marie’s sister and co-organiser Siobhan, this year’s event will be more of a cultural and heritage festival than a simple music festival.
“There will be back to back sessions, as soon as one finishes another one starts. It will start in the morning and will go on late into the night. Really what we have done this year is try to make it more of a cultural and heritage festival as well as a music festival,” she said.
“We will have storytelling, sean-nós dancing, an art exhibition, a photographic exhibition. That exhibition is a collaboration between Eamon Murphy, the artists, and Christy McNamara, the photographer, and is of musicians of County Clare. I have seen them and they are fabulous.
“There is also a pop-up Gaeltacht this year. There is something for everyone.”
The festival is dedicated to Lahinch musician and Republican, Susan O’Sullivan.
A fighter, a musician, a businesswoman, a lovable rogue, a leader of the late-night sessions, Lahinch woman Susan was a one of a kind. Born in Bartrá, just outside Lahinch, in 1892, Susan took up the fiddle when she was eight years old.
As well as being a talented player in her own right, her house became the main Sunday evening venue for some of the greats of the Clare trad scene, including Willie Clancy, Seamus Ennis and Junior Crehan.
Later in life, she was also a great advocate of passing on the tradition to the young, and served as president of Clare Comhaltas in the 1960s.
But in her younger days, in the heat of the War of Independence, Susan lent her considerable intelligence and skill to the Republican cause, and it was this involvement that led to her family home in Lahinch being burned by the Black and Tans in the wake of the Rineen Ambush in 1920.
“It was always a story that we knew as a family. We would always have talked about Susan amongst ourselves, when the tribe met – the extended Sullivan and Stack family,” said Siobhan.
“That story was always there and it was brough forward before by Marcella Shannon who looked after our grandmother and ran her business for her in the 1970s. She said, would you ever consider doing a festival for your grandmother, because her house was always the gathering house for the musicians of North Clare every Sunday night.
“We owe a lot to Marcella for prompting the idea. She said it to us and, there and then, we said yes, let’s run with this idea.
“We knew it was going to be a challenge. We knew that nobody had done anything like this before but we got incredible backing from the publicans in Lahinch and all the businesses. This year the support is even stronger, last year we had five businesses onboard, this year we have eleven businesses including Castledarcy Glamping.
“There are 145 musicians booked for Lahinch this year so it is undoubtably a musicians festival.”
Andrew Hamilton is a journalist, investigative reporter and podcaster who has been working in the media in Ireland for the past 20 years. His areas of special interest include the environment, mental health and politics.